Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Year in Review: Best & Worst

I am the kind of person who tends to see the negative first.
I have no problem admitting that, and I live a fine, happy life, but the
negative is what jumps out at me. So, in pouring over the events that defined
2014, the list of the bad was markedly easier to compile. The more I thought
about it, though, the more I realized the joy is in the details.

How bad a year could it have been with so many great films
and so many vital stories being told? How gloomy could I be about a year in which
important new voices made themselves heard and some of the great voices from
our past screamed out once again? There is good to be found, and yet, if you
want the morose and the bitter, skip on down to the second half of this article,
and you will find that, too. For better and worse, here are the trends and
moments that defined 2014 for me.

Four best things

1. Music at the
movies

Music and movies go hand in hand, really. From the earliest
days of the form, when “silent” cinema meant no dialogue, all music, the two
arts have been inseparable. However, when movies try to depict the art and
artists behind the music, at best, the results have been mixed. For every truly
brilliant The Commitments or Coal Miner’s Daughter, there is a Beyond the Sea or Get on Up to push the form back to its blandest biographical
inclinations.

Not so this year as three great films about music and
musicians (four if you count the well-regarded God Help the Girl, which I have not seen) graced cinema screens.
From the insanity of Whiplash to the
sublime We Are the Best! to the
sublimely insane Frank, musicians had
their day at the movies all year in 2014. In one way or another, each of these
films strikes at the heart of why making music, or any art, matters. It is
something one feels. One must do it. There is no other choice, and these films
understand that.

2. Cinematography

My favorite film craft is cinematography. As a purely visual
art, it is the one thing filmmakers hold over other storytellers. In lighting,
composition, and movement, cinematographers can create great work without a
word or a sound. The best find ways to push the medium forward and expand what
we think of when we think of movie visuals. Others work to perfect the old
ways, while still saying something fresh and interesting.

Emmanuel Lubezki turned Birdman
into a cinematic magic trick, making the film appear as though it were shot in
one unbroken take. Fabrice Aragno made 3D a valid form of artistic expression
with the innovative, baffling, and always intriguing Goodbye to Language. Dick Pope took audiences inside the mind of a
painter by filming the world the way an artist might see his work in Mr. Turner. Each of these artists
deserves praise for refusing to settle for good enough and pushing the
boundaries of what we should expect at the movies.

3. Triumph of the
cult masters

Fresh blood is integral to the world of cinema. New ideas and
new ways of looking at the medium help prevent stagnation and promote growth.
However, there is something to be said for the artists who have stood up
against the stale since the beginnings of their careers, the filmmakers for
whom the ordinary was never an option. They may not be heavy hitters at the box
office, and audiences may not be able to make heads or tails of their films,
but the cult masters of cinema are as vitally important as the household names
and their ilk.

Since his first feature came out in 1960, Jean-Luc Godard
has made the reinvention of cinema his primary goal, and he is at it again with
Goodbye to Language. Similarly, the
far less prolific Alejandro Jodorowsky returned to screens this year after a
23-year absence with the daffy and brilliant Dance of Reality, making one wish he does not stay away for that
long again. Finally, Lars von Trier, that prickly Danish provocateur, unleashed
his epic sex drama Nymphomaniac to
audiences who probably were not ready for it but who needed it none the less.

4. Actors taking
chances

About those household names, though, those shining stars of
the cinematic universe – sometimes, they take chances, too, and when they do,
the results can be electrifying. There is satisfaction in celebrities
unconcerned with vanity in their work, willing to look ugly or weird or
repulsive. Jake Gyllenhaal transformed into a slithering, creeping creature of
the darkness for Nightcrawler,
revealing sides of his persona previously untapped. Michael Fassbender, usually
so still and so expressive, donned a giant paper mache head and became the
embodiment of artistic exuberance in Frank.

Marion Cotillard shed the glamor of some of her previous
roles and tackled the part of a clinically depressed mother of two fighting for
her family’s livelihood in Two Days, One
Night. The always adventurous Charlotte Gainsbourg joined forces once again
with von Trier, and in their third collaboration, Nymphomaniac, she goes farther than she ever has before to depict a
woman who has degraded and destroyed herself her whole life but still deserves
and demands respect. If only more actors took risks such as these, we might
have a much more interesting film landscape overall.

Four worst things

1. Sony cancels The
Interview

As if anything else could top this list, Sony’s handling of
the debacle around The Interview was
the worst mismanagement of a crisis in the film industry in recent memory. The
company made wrong decision after wrong decision every step of the way, and by
the end, it was so shrouded in failure that even the eventual release of the
film could not erase the stink of the situation.

So, yes, the movie has been seen now, possibly by even more
people than would have seen it had no controversy been stirred, but the facts
remain: Fearing for its own reputation and stock, Sony failed to support the
artists who make the products that keep its film division humming. I have yet
to see the film but plan to do so. It is apparently only OK, which it has every
right to be. It is just a shame we had to go through all of this just to
exercise our right to find out for ourselves.

2. Deaths of icons

Apologies to the great talents who will not be mentioned in
this section, but a couple hundred words is too few to express the loss and
regret of a year’s worth of departed icons. Every year, we lose countless
talented people – stars, innovators, and journeymen – but 2014 seemed to hit
particularly hard on that front, beginning in February with the death of one my
all-time favorite actors and one of the all-time greats, Philip Seymour
Hoffman.

If it had just been Hoffman, it would have constituted a
rough year, but death was unrelenting over the last 12 months, claiming Robin
Williams, Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Ruby Dee, Richard Attenborough, and a
host of others. It is always sad when an icon dies, but it felt like we bombarded
with such notices over the last year. Here is to hoping 2015 is kinder to our
poor hearts.

3. Science at the
movies

When I wrote about Godzilla
back in July, I said it is unfair to criticize an entertainment spectacle for
its failings in the science and nature department. These are not documentaries,
and they should be given license to create inspiring new worlds. However, if a
film – and Godzilla is a prime
offender – wishes to engage debate about its science, then by all means, let us
have that debate. Godzilla and Interstellar, two of the worst movies I
saw this year, leaned on their science as the basis for story, then forgot to
consider what it was they were selling. Pseudoscience in fiction is fine unless
you are selling facts.

On the flipside of that coin, two movies about real-life
scientists, brilliant men whose accomplishments in their respective fields
continue to inform the ways we live today, seem to have forgotten their main
characters were learned scientists. The
Imitation Game reduces Alan Turing to an autistic savant whose genius we
could not begin to understand, so the film does not even try. Meanwhile, The Theory of Everything finds the love
story between Stephen Hawking and his long-suffering first wife of greater
intrigue than the history of time or the origins of our universe.

4. Good intentions

It is nice to be nice, and it is good to be good, but no one
ever made history that way. World-changing events are always messy,
revolutionary leaders are often prickly, and endings are rarely sunshine and
happy days. It is fine to depict an ideal world, since many of us go to the
movies hoping to escape the harshness of everyday life, but artists who take
harshness as their subject have a responsibility to emotional honesty that was
sorely lacking in several major films this year.

Pride, about the
movement for gay rights and union solidarity in 1980s England and Wales, Dear White People, about antiquated
racial attitudes being alive and well in modern America, and Unbroken, a hagiography of U.S. Olympian
and war hero Louis Zamperini, all had the best of intentions with mixed or
offensive outcomes. Unbroken is the
worst of these, but each failed in its own specific ways to champion the cause
it meant to and instead fell back on clichés and stereotypes, not exactly the
best way to move the world forward.

Check back tomorrow as
Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review continues with the Top 10 Quotes of the
Year.